Audio GD Singularity 19 - New R2R DAC

I'd love to hear one. Its been many years since I've heard a 1704 Dac 19 though. Friends only?

 

I at least would be interested in the new custom R2R DAC more than any other model they currently make. Can´t take part in any loaner (EU), but impressions from experienced people would be very interesting to read. The Singularity lineup very likely represents the future of the company as it seems to be their in house "PCM1704 successor". Plus there aren´t that many non-1704 based R2R designs out there anyway, so new ones are always interesting. Should be fairly easy to sell off too.

For people in the EU Audio-GD was at least once extremely high value - back then the dollar was weak and the PCM1704 prices hadn´t been hiked up. Maybe they still are, I don´t know. I don´t have any experience of their current lineup. It seems the worst price hikes have happened to the flagship range especially - the REF7 I had ages ago cost less than half (might even have been a third) of what their similar products go for these days.

 

If there's sufficient general interest among other members here, then I'd be willing to audition and write-up something on the discrete R2R version as a "community service" type thing. I have no personal interest in it from an audio perspective, however.

I have some low-level academic interest in the implementation, as looking at the pictures of the discrete DAC board it looks to be a fairly run of the mill shift-register/latch/resistor ladder implementation with control logic (and other possible functionality) implemented via FPGA. It also looks to be fairly inexpensively produced, so absent some non-obvious (i.e. proprietary) "magic" I'd have concerns about tolerances and achievable technical performance. I very much doubt it approaches the performance specs of pretty much any LSI IC based solution in terms of tolerance, accuracy, drift or thermal stability.

That's a very long winded way of saying that if enough people would like me to review it then I'm willing to do it, (though I'd question why they wouldn't just want to participate in a loaner tour themselves) but it's not something that I'd personally ask you to apply SBAF funds to.

 

I'm relatively new to all this equipment still, only about a year under my belt and all i have heard are some not to hot sabre D-S implementations before moving to the dac-19 which from what i had heard before was a huge step up, then another few steps in the direction i wanted to hear with an external clock/converter PLL disabled and then then new DSP update. Still really want to hear a Gungnir Multibit though, or any Schiit multibit for that matter as well as a Jot/saga/freya.
But i would love to see what people in this community think of not only thew new Singularity 19 but say a Master 7 or DAC-19 with the latest DSP update, not to hear that it's better than something else, just to hear that it is indeed better than it used to be. And as far as getting an amp to test and for loaner purposes i would recommend either the NFB-1AMP or C-2 11th depending on SE/BAL preferences. Hope to hear some impressions from you guys, i respect your opinions quite a bit and use your knowledge/experiences moving forward to explore my own tastes.

 

Just wanted to say while I am a newbie and don't post much I really appreciate all the equipment you guys bring in to review based on member interest. This is a one of the key differentiating features of your site that always brings me back. Much more interesting IMO than threads on banning. Not a dig on you guys - I frequent many audio forums and there seems to be an epidemic of this kind of thing going around...

 

That's what is so good about this place. What borrego wrote there is passive-aggressive remarks about other manufacturers in comparison with Audio-gd. But instead of shitting on him, mods here brings interest to the table about this R2R DAC, and review them.

 

Borrego does come across as a Shillhard proxy in the pro Audio Gd product line and jealousy of Marv's success with the board.

That said, if AGD is doing something with an R2R DAC and the price is right, I don't think its a bad idea to have it reviewed here.

 

Exactly. So

Ha Ha, now i am officially labelled as a audio-gd fan boy here. Any trophy point for it?

I believe I am just presenting facts (which I know and personally experienced) here. Rather than "speculating" somthing like the the current PCM1704 chip price and make judgements.

In the other audio-gd NFB-29 DAC-AMP tread I complained about the long warm up time required by audio-gd DAC/AMP and how one need to throw a towel over them to speed warm up. I also stated their specially requested high gain amps sound bad. So I am not a blind fan boy just presenting "selected" facts.

I also don't like repeating mentioning something like price which is available in the link and content in the first post of the thread

The audio-gd slow long warm up time issue was what led me studying their CAST circuit design and did the OPA2140 DC Servo opamp tweak. And I can assure it is not just a minor change of sound. Just the super quick warm up time it gives to my audio-gd stack is worth the cost/work. The bass resolution improvement is just bonus. To me audio-gd is aways a DIY brand which i find doing tweaking as normal as tweaking, say, a T3 amp.

I like this place so far but I believe more diversity is needed here. For example, Japanese gears other than headphones are seldomly discussed here.

 

There are people on sbaf who like AGD products. The difference is they don't come out butthurt because Marv trotted out his somewhat known story on here of why he's leery of the company.

 

Not so much of your defense than the tone of it.

You come across as personally offended, which is why most of us get the impression of fanboy.

Hopefully it comes over to my part of the world and I get to try it, certainly sounds interesting, although not enough that I'll spend a thousand SGD blind on it.

 

As a potential buyer of a multi-bit dac, I am really interested in this product. To be specific, how will sing19 compete against much cheaper Modi Multibit or a lot more expensive Gungnir Multibit?
Of course I know Schiit offers Bifrost Multibit. But I couldn't justify Bifrost Multibit's price when I compared it with the above two (I think Modi Multibit carnibalizes Schiit's own products!).

$700 is clearly within my budget range, so I might go for this if I can be assured by some positive reviews from SBAF people (I want to join the loaner program, but I assume only friends can do so).

Of course I might be hesitant again if schiit upgrades Bifrost Multibit this year.. haha.

 

I really like your post!

 

Impressions for Marv, Torq and Hands would be most welcome. Measurements from atomicbob would be awesome as well.

 

I'm in.

 

Really interested to hear impressions of the Singularity vs. Gungnir Multibit.